CCP Games announced that its long-running subscription-based sci-fi MMO EVE Online has surpassed the 500,000 subscriber mark worldwide for the first time in the game’s history. The milestone is a major one in the game's ten years of operation and follows the December 4 release of EVE Online: Retribution, the game’s 18th free expansion. CCP says that this latest expansion is its most successful ever. Also in December, EVE Online relaunched in China with new partner Tiancity to bring the game to a massive new audience where it has been thriving ever since.

"Ten years after release, it is incredibly inspiring that, through a lot of hard work from our EVE Online team, we are crossing the half-million subscriber mark," said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CEO of CCP. "For me, this is a true testament that EVE can live on forever, as long as we do right by her. We have not come to this point alone; millions of players have helped push us to this milestone. I now know in my mind what I previously only believed in my heart: that EVE will outlive us all."

In January, CCP’s DUST 514, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online first-person shooter, went into open beta and became available for free download exclusively to PlayStation 3 users worldwide. DUST 514 shares the same, real-time universe as EVE Online and player corporations can coordinate attacks between the two games.

CCP will commemorate EVE Online’s tenth anniversary throughout the year under a unified "Second Decade" theme that will kick off in late April in Reykjavik, Iceland with the sold-out EVE Fanfest . EVE’s official tenth birthday follows on May 6th and will mark the official start of the second decade of the EVE Universe.